Market Economy Quotes

The human species was not born into a market economy. Bees won't sell you honey if you offer them an electronic funds transfer. The human species imagined money into existence, and it exists - for us, not mice or wasps - because we go on believing in it. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

The tragedy of government welfare programs is not just wasted taxpayer money but wasted lives. The effects of welfare in encouraging the break-up of low-income families have been extensively documented. The primary way that those with low incomes can advance in the market economy is to get married, stay married, and work - but welfare programs have created incentives to do the opposite. ~ Michael Tanner

In a market economy, a main determinant of social standing is participation in the labor market and the associated willingness to 'self-commodify' (e.g., Esping-Andersen 1999), the latter term nicely emphasizing how market economies render all forms of worth, even self-worth, a function of market valuation. When individuals fail to self-commodify, they fall outside the most fundamental institutions of the society, thereby reducing them to nonentities and social ciphers. This is why a mere transfer of income to the underclass... is inconsequential in relieving feelings of social exclusion. If anything, such a transfer only draws attention to the initial failure to self-commodify. although a class map also embodies distinctions of social standing among those who have an enduring commitment to the labor market, the social divide between the underclass and all other classes looms especially large because it captures this fundamental insider-outsider distinction. ~ Ravi Kanbur

There is no kind of freedom and liberty other than the kind which the market economy brings about. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

The great hatred of capitalism in the hearts of the oppressed, ancient and modern, I think, stems not merely from the ensuing vast inequality in wealth, and the often unfair and arbitrary nature of who profits and who suffers, but from the silent acknowledgement that under a free market economy the many victims of the greed of the few are still better off than those under the utopian socialism of the well-intended. It is a hard thing for the poor to acknowledge benefits from their rich moral inferiors who never so intended it. (p.272) ~ Victor Davis Hanson

I am not a capitalist in the simplistic left/right sense. But I do believe in the power of the global free-market economy and in using capitalist tools. I believe in the power of teh free market and the power of capital in the marketplace. I also believe that providing unemployment benefits is not the best way to address poverty. The able-bodied poor don't wan tor need charity. The dole only increases their misery, robs them of incentive and, more important, of self-respect. ~ Muhammad Yunus

Let me say again that the relationship is asymmetrical: there's no democracy without a market economy, but you can have a market economy without democracy. ~ Peter L. Berger

In the market economy the price that is offered is counted upon to produce the result that is sought. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

There is no use in deceiving ourselves. American public opinion rejects the market economy, the capitalistic free enterprise system that provided the nation with the highest standard of living ever attained. Full government control of all activities of the individual is virtually the goal of both national parties. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

The fateful moment for the Chinese economy, crippled by central planning and collectivized production, was when Deng Xiaoping, China's long-term leader after Mao's death, announced that the country would pursue "Socialism with Chinese characteristics," which is to say a market economy under an authoritarian technocracy. This was in 1977, as good a year as any for marking the birth of modern China. Deng and his associates undertook a job akin to that of a political bomb squad, laboriously dismantling most of the economic ideology installed by Mao without blowing up political continuity at the same time. That they succeeded is in many ways the single most important political fact of contemporary China. ~ Clay Shirky

The New Finance focused on the market's major systematic mistake. In failing to appreciate the strength of competitive forces in a market economy, it over estimates the length of the short run. In doing so, it overreacts to records of success and failure for individual companies, driving the prices of successful firms too high and their unsuccessful counterparts too low. ~ Robert Haugen

Nothing is more unpopular today than the free market economy, i.e., capitalism. Everything that is considered unsatisfactory in present-day conditions is charged to capitalism. The atheists make capitalism responsible for the survival of Christianity. But the papal encyclicals blame capitalism for the spread of irreligion and the sins of our contemporaries, and the Protestant churches and sects are no less vigorous in their indictment of capitalist greed. Friends of peace consider our wars as an offshoot of capitalist imperialism. But the adamant nationalist warmongers of Germany and Italy indicted capitalism for its "bourgeois" pacifism, contrary to human nature and to the inescapable laws of history. Sermonizers accuse capitalism of disrupting the family and fostering licentiousness. But the "progressives" blame capitalism for the preservation of allegedly outdated rules of sexual restraint. Almost all men agree that poverty is an outcome of capitalism. On the other hand many deplore the fact that capitalism, in catering lavishly to the wishes of people intent upon getting more amenities and a better living, promotes a crass materialism. These contradictory accusations of capitalism cancel one another. But the fact remains that there are few people left who would not condemn capitalism altogether. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

In a market economy with the division and specialization of labor, people use others as means to achieve their ends. This is the essence of market cooperation. ~ Stephan Kinsella

A depression is a large-scale decline in production and trade ... there is nothing in the nature of a free-market economy to cause such an event. ~ Nathaniel Branden

While big-business leaders and firms can be highly productive, servants of consumers in a free market economy, they are also all too often, seekers after subsidies, contracts, privileges, or cartels furnished by big government. Often, business lobbyists and leaders are the sparkplugs for the statist, interventionist system. ~ Murray Rothbard

Competitiveness is just as much a part of our nature as empathy. The ideal, in my view, is a democratic system with a social market economy, because it takes both tendencies into account. ~ Frans De Waal

These days, nearly everyone claims to be democratic. I have even heard it claimed that the Chinese Communist Party is democratic. 'Capitalist', by contrast, is a word too often used as a term of abuse to be much heard in polite company. How do the institutions of the democratic state and those of the market economy relate to one another? Do corporations play an active part in politics, through lobbyists and campaign contributions? Do governments play an active part in economic life, through subsidies, tariffs and other market-distorting devices, or through regulation? What is the right balance to be struck ~ Niall Ferguson

When each of us is free to work out his own economic destiny, within the framework of the market economy, the institution of private property, and the general rule of law, we will all improve our economic condition much faster than when we are ordered around by bureaucrats. ~ Henry Hazlitt

We must have the time to create strict rules so that property is not sold by Communist managers for a low price. They often get payments under the table to sell to the first bidder. This does not build public support for a market economy. ~ Vaclav Klaus

My claim is that we do not have a market economy, but a capitalist economy. ~ David Korten

What is called economic progress is the joint effect of the activities of the three progressive groups-or classes-of the savers, the scientist-inventors, and the entrepreneurs, operating in a market economy as far as it is not sabotaged by the endeavors of the nonprogressive majority of the routinists and the public policies supported by them. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

So I think one can say on empirical grounds - not because of some philosophical principle - that you can't have democracy unless you have a market economy. ~ Peter L. Berger

Government means always coercion and compulsion and is by necessity the opposite of liberty. Government is a guarantor of liberty and is compatible with liberty only if its range is adequately restricted to the preservation of economic freedom. Where there is no market economy, the best-intentioned provisions of constitutions and laws remain a dead letter. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

The socialism of centralised state control of industry and production, is dead. It misunderstood the nature and development of a modern market economy. It failed to recognise that the state and public sector can become a vested interest capable of oppression as much as the vested interests of wealth and capital. it was based on a false view of class that became too rigid to explain or illuminate the nature of class division today. ~ Tony Blair

A market economy is a tool - a valuable and effective tool - for organizing productive activity. A market society is a way of life in which market values seep into every aspect of human endeavour. It's a place where social relations are made over in the image of the market. ~ Michael Sandel

Communism brought out the worst in human nature and crippled people's ability or ambition to participate in a market economy. ~ Thomas Woods

Risk, as first articulated by the economist Frank H. Knight in 1921,45 is something that you can put a price on. Say that you'll win a poker hand unless your opponent draws to an inside straight: the chances of that happening are exactly 1 chance in 11.46 This is risk. It is not pleasant when you take a "bad beat" in poker, but at least you know the odds of it and can account for it ahead of time. In the long run, you'll make a profit from your opponents making desperate draws with insufficient odds. Uncertainty, on the other hand, is risk that is hard to measure. You might have some vague awareness of the demons lurking out there. You might even be acutely concerned about them. But you have no real idea how many of them there are or when they might strike. Your back-of-the-envelope estimate might be off by a factor of 100 or by a factor of 1,000; there is no good way to know. This is uncertainty. Risk greases the wheels of a free-market economy; uncertainty grinds them to a halt. ~ Nate Silver

The kind of sociopolitical structure that Protestantism engenders - based on free inquiry, participatory politics, and limited government - tends to favor market economics. ~ Alec Ryrie

Market economy favors the have against the have not ~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

It remains to be seen, for example whether China can continue to develop as a market economy while still retaining an authoritarian communist political system. ~ Peter Dicken

Early in life, Lincoln decided that he did not want to live like his father, who in his son's eyes exemplified the values of the pre-market world where people remained content with a subsistence lifestyle. From age twenty-one, Lincoln lived in towns and cities and evinced no interest in returning to the farm or to manual labor. He held jobs - storekeeper, lawyer, and surveyor - essential to the market economy. ~ Eric Foner

The barriers that renewables and efficiency face come less from our living in a capitalist market economy and more from not taking market economics seriously. ~ Amory Lovins

Multinational corporations and a market economy have transformed human beings into instruments of making money. Human beings should be the end. And money should be the means to an end. ~ Satish Kumar

We mustn't fear to adopt the advanced management methods applied in capitalist countries ( ... ) The very essence of socialism is the liberation and development of the productive systems ( ... ) Socialism and market economy are not incompatible ( ... ) We should be concerned about right-wing deviations, but most of all, we must be concerned about left-wing deviations. ~ Deng Xiaoping

The strength or weakness of a society depends more on the level of its spiritual life than on its level of industrialization. Neither a market economy nor even general abundance constitutes the crowning achievement of human life. If a nation's spiritual energies have been exhausted, it will not be saved from collapse by the most perfect government structure or by any industrial development. A tree with a rotten core cannot stand. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

As soon as the economic freedom which the market economy grants to its members is removed, all political liberties and bills of rights become humbug. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

As much as I say that market economy is a more aggressive, expansile form of command economy, I say now that democracy is a more aggressive, expansile form of dictatorship. The sin of democracy and any types of -cracy is their numbers. ~ Andreas Laurencius

The market economy as such does not respect political frontiers. Its field is the world. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

A market economy cannot thrive absent the well-being of average people, even in a gilded age. ~ Jaron Lanier

In the 19th century, a lot of people were against outlawing child labour, because to do so would be against the very foundations of a free market economy: 'These children want to work, these people want to employ them ... what is your problem? It's not as if anyone has kidnapped them ... ' ~ Brian Eno

The first principle of the market economy is that it is comprised of many small buyers and sellers, which implies a substantial degree of equity. Another fundamental market principle is that costs are internalized in the producer's price. ~ David Korten

The rationale for the vast network of government welfare programs as well as regulation and control over private enterprise is based on the socialist analysis of the market economy. ~ Richard Ebeling

The real source of market promise is not the wealthy few in the developing world, or even the3 emerging middle-income consumers. It is the billions of aspiring poor who are joining the market economy for the first time. ~ C. K. Prahalad

The libertarian creed ... offers the fulfillment of the best of the American past along with the promise of a far better future. Libertarians are squarely in the great classical liberal tradition that built the United States and bestowed on us the American heritage of individual liberty, a peaceful foreign policy, minimal government, and a free-market economy. ~ Murray Rothbard

We, the Social Democrats, are convinced that capitalism needs to be tamed a second time. The first time we achieved that in Germany for many decades with the social market economy. That is no longer enough. Now we need to do it in Europe and even globally. ~ Sigmar Gabriel

Any so-called 'radical' strategy that seeks to empower the disempowered in the realm of social reproduction by opening up that realm to monetisation and market forces is headed in exactly the wrong direction. Providing financial literacy classes for the populace at large will simply expose that population predatory practices as they seek to manage their own investment portfolios like minnows swimming in a sea of sharks. Providing microcredit and microfinance facilities encourages people to participate in the market economy but does so in such a way as to maximise the energy they have to expend while minimising their returns. Providing legal title for land property ownership in the hope that this will bring economic and social stability to the lives of the marginalised will almost certainly lead in the long run to their dispossession and eviction from that space and place they already hold through customary use rights. ~ David Harvey

The market economy is deeply congruent with the values set out in the Hebrew Bible. Material prosperity is a divine blessing. Poverty crushes the spirit as well as the body, and its alleviation is a sacred task. Work is a noble calling. ~ Jonathan Sacks

China, as a nation, is a country under the one-party rule of the Communist Party, but it has introduced the market economy. As a country that is under the one-party rule of the Communist Party, normally what they should be seeking is equality of results. ~ Shinzo Abe

Servile labour disappeared because it could not stand the competition of free labour; its un-profitability sealed its doom in the market economy. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

What we want is to establish the rules of a market economy - not to plan its outcome. ~ Vaclav Klaus

What vitiates entirely the socialists economic critique of capitalism is their failure to grasp the sovereignty of the consumers in the market economy. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

It is something of a miracle that individual selfish decisions (in a market economy) must lead to a collectively efficient outcome. ~ Steven Landsburg

I know their unstinted devotion to the free-market economy, provided it's their freedom and somebody else's economy. ~ John Le Carre

What most people really object to when they object to a free market is that it is so hard for them to shape it to their own will. The market gives people what the people want instead of what other people think they ought to want. At the bottom of many criticisms of the market economy is really lack of belief in freedom itself. ~ Milton Friedman

The market economy-capitalism-is a social system of consumers' supremacy. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

For the last hundred years the big organizational question has been whether any given task was best taken on by the state, directing the effort in a planned way, or by businesses competing in a market. ~ Clay Shirky

In an unmolested market economy - one where all dealings are consensual - the 'allocation' of wealth and income is the result of transactions. ~ Sheldon Richman

Yes, I think India's economy always has been a mixed economy, and by Western standards we are much more of a market economy than a public sector-driven economy. ~ Manmohan Singh

In short, what the living wage is really about is not living standards, or even economics, but morality. Its advocates are basically opposed to the idea that wages are a market price-determined by supply and demand, the same as the price of apples or coal. And it is for that reason, rather than the practical details, that the broader political movement of which the demand for a living wage is the leading edge is ultimately doomed to failure: For the amorality of the market economy is part of its essence, and cannot be legislated away. ~ Paul Krugman

In the market economy the consumers are supreme. Consumers determine, by their
buying or abstention from buying, what should be produced, by whom and how, of
what quality and in what quantity. The entrepreneurs, capitalists, and landowners who
fail to satisfy in the best possible and cheapest way the most urgent of the not yet
satisfied wishes of the consumers are forced to go out of business and forfeit their
preferred position. In business offices and in laboratories the keenest minds are busy
fructifying the most complex achievements of scientific research for the production of
ever better implements and gadgets for people who have no inkling of the scientific
theories that make the fabrication of such things possible. The bigger an enterprise is,
the more it is forced to adjust its production activities to the changing whims and
fancies of the masses, its masters. The fundamental principle of capitalism is mass
production to supply the masses. It is the patronage of the masses that makes
enterprises grow into bigness. The common man is supreme in the market economy.
He is the customer "who is always right. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

The trouble with a free market economy is that it requires so many policemen to make it work. ~ Dean Acheson

The truth is that capitalism has not only multiplied population figures, but at the same time, improved the people's standard of living in an unprecedented way. Neither economic thinking nor historical experience suggests that any other social system could be as beneficial to the masses as capitalism. The results speak for themselves. The market economy needs no apologists and propagandists. It can apply to itself the words of Sir Christopher Wren's epitaph in St. Paul's: Si monumentum requires, circumspice. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

A market economy is to economics what democracy is to government: a decent, if flawed, choice among many bad alternatives. ~ Charles Wheelan

Government planning not only fails; it tends to produce outcomes that are the opposite of what its proponents say that they favor. The only stable and productive social system is one that embraces human liberty in its totality, and defends the market economy, private property, sound money, and peaceful international relations, while opposing government intervention as economically and socially destructive. ~ Llewellyn Rockwell

Yet despite...accommodations with commerce, Möser regarded the market as primarily a threat--to the artisanal citizens of the town, to the traditional wants of the peasantry, and to the political structure to society, since it created a growing class of people outside the traditional paternalistic relations of the countryside. Möser's conception of contemporary political and economic trends in Osnabrück was essentialy tragic and tinged with that idealization of the past that would later be called romantic. Möser's heroes were the artisan-citizen and the independent peasant, his villains the shopkeeper and the peddler. ~ Jerry Z. Muller

Money has to undergo a metamorphosis again, it has to relinquish its role in the market economy and engage in an economy of capacities. Then we would be concerned with human creative productivity. And we would come full circle, since each human being can then act within his company as co-creator of the future, can - in full dignity - contribute to shaping this future. ~ Joseph Beuys

Economic activity, especially the activity of a market economy, cannot be conducted in an institutional, juridical or political vacuum. On the contrary, it presupposes sure guarantees of individual freedom and private property, as well as a stable currency and efficient public services. ~ Pope John Paul II

It is particularly odd that economists who profess to be champions of a free-market economy, should go to such twists and turns to avoid facing the plain fact: that gold, that scarce and valuable market-produced metal, has always been, and will continue to be, by far the best money for human society. ~ Murray Rothbard

There is no pure free-market economy. ~ Jeane Kirkpatrick

People are increasingly becoming disappointed and disillusioned with politics and business, and especially with the market economy. They are meeting the physical needs of human beings, maybe. They are providing food. But not good and healthy food. ~ Satish Kumar

the market economy should be subordinate to and so reinforce the virtuous life. ~ Daniel M. Bell Jr.

Getting a lousy education, then spending a lifetime pitted against your fellow workers in the gladiatorial theater of the free market economy does not make for optimism or open mindedness, both hallmarks of liberalism. It makes for a kind of bleak coarseness and inner degradation that allows working people to accept the American empire's wars without a blink. ~ Joe Bageant

the existing market economy has no "stable" or "neutral" setting: there is only growth or contraction. ~ Richard Heinberg

What is it about a work of art, even when it is bought and sold in the market, that makes us distinguish it from ... pure commodities? A work of art is a gift, not a commodity ... works of art exist simultaneously in two "economies", a market economy and a gift economy. Only one of these is essential, however: a work of art can survive without the market, but where there is no gift, there is no art. ~ Lewis Hyde

The key problem is to find out why that sector of society of the past, which I would not hesitate to call capitalist, should have lived as if in a bell jar, cut off from the rest; why was it not able to expand and conquer the whole of society? ... [Why was it that] a significant rate of capital formation was possible only in certain sectors and not in the whole market economy of the time? ~ Fernand Braudel

The federal government could make a Rolls Royce affordable for every American, but we would not be a richer country as a result. We would in fact be a much poorer country, because of all the vast resources transferred from other economic activities to subsidize an extravagant luxury. [...] To have politicians arbitrarily change the price tags, so that prices no longer represent the real costs, is to defeat the whole purpose [of an economy: to make trade-offs, with the prices of a market economy representing the costs of producing things].
Reality doesn't change when the government changes price tags. Talk about "bringing down health care costs" is not aimed at the costly legal environment in which medical science operates, or other sources of needless medical costs. It is aimed at price control, which hides costs rather than reducing them. [...]
Whether in France during the 1790s, the Soviet Union after the Bolshevik revolution, or in newly independent African nations during the past generation, governments have imposed artificially low prices on food. In each case, this led to artificially low supplies of food and artificially high levels of hunger.
People who complain about the "prohibitive" cost of housing, or of going to college, for example, fail to understand that the whole point of costs is to be prohibitive. [...] The idea [that "basic necessities" should be a "right"] certainly sounds nice. But the very fact that we can seriously entertain such a notio ~ Thomas Sowell

Free markets. What does this system mean? The answer is simple: it is the market economy, it is the system in which the cooperation of individuals in the social division of labor is achieved by the market. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

In the past six months, our federal government has devised a dozen strategies to save America's financial markets. Each plan has been more costly, more risky, and less aligned with the principles of our country's free market economy than the last. I am disappointed to say that this latest plan puts all the rest of them to shame. ~ Michael Enzi

To speak of 'limits to growth' under a capitalistic market economy is as meaningless as to speak of limits of warfare under a warrior society. The moral pieties, that are voiced today by many well-meaning environmentalists, are as naive as the moral pieties of multinationals are manipulative. Capitalism can no more be 'persuaded' to limit growth than a human being can be 'persuaded' to stop breathing. Attempts to 'green' capitalism, to make it 'ecological', are doomed by the very nature of the system as a system of endless growth. ~ Murray Bookchin

We know that communism is the right hypothesis. All those who abandon this hypothesis immediately resign themselves to the market economy, to parliamentary democracy-the form of state suited to capitalism-and to the inevitable and 'natural' character of the most monstrous inequalities. ~ Alain Badiou

So in Asia I want to make - I want to succeed to make a model of what success, practicing democracy, and market economy. Then that will give a good influence over Asian countries. ~ Kim Dae-jung

The real bosses in the capitalist system of market economy are the consumers. They by their buying and by their abstention from buying decide who should own the capital and run the plants. They determine what should be produced and in what quantity and quality. Their attitudes result either in profit or in loss for the enterpriser. They make poor men rich and rich men poor. They are no easy bosses. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Although Adam Smith is today often regarded as a "conservative" figure, he in fact attacked some of the dominant ideas and interests of his own times. Moreover, the idea of a spontaneously self-equilibrating system - the market economy - first developed by the Physiocrats and later made part of the tradition of classical economics by Adam Smith, represented a radically new departure, not only in analysis of social causation but also in seeing a reduced role for political, intellectual, or other elites as guides or controllers of the masses. ~ Thomas Sowell

The free market economy is supposed to be the only path leading to the happiness of humanity by promoting wealth and prosperity, power and influence of nations. ~ Omar Bongo

I believe in a real democratic system, with a state of law and freedom of the press. I believe in a free, open-market economy integrated with the world. And I believe in equality of opportunity. Those are my basic beliefs. On top of that, of course, I believe in some moral values. ~ Sebastian Pinera

I think a major cause of present Asian economic difficulties that mainly come from, you know, lack of market economy. ~ Kim Dae-jung

Every market is in transition. ~ Kenneth Lay

It had been well known for twenty years that the distribution of large and small earthquakes followed a particular mathematical pattern, precisely the same scaling pattern that seemed to govern the distribution of personal incomes in a free-market economy. ~ James Gleick

Capitalism is a compulsively expansive system. A modern market economy dictates that an enterprise must grow or die, and nothing will prevent capitalism from industrializing - more accurately, expanding - endlessly over the entire face of the planet whenever it is prepared to do so. Only the complete reconstruction of society and the economy can end the dilemmas that globalization raises - the exploitation of workers and the enhancement of corporate power to the point of threatening the stability, indeed the very safety, of the planet. ~ Murray Bookchin

We will do whatever the government tells us to do, which is a critically important principle of the Chinese market economy, and there is nothing more for discussion about it. ~ Li Shufu

In a true free market economy, you can't make yourself rich without enriching your community. ~ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

The thing that makes reading and writing suspect in the eyes of the market economy is that it's not corrupted. ~ Richard Powers

Prohibitionism violates the fundamental law of market economy, which led to the emergence of a thriving shadow economy. ~ Jeffrey Dhywood

Market economy can only mean survival of the fittest ~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Unless there is free and fair competition, there can't be healthy economic development. And what we have in Burma now is not an open-market economy that allows free and fair competition, but a form of colonialism makes a few people very, very wealthy. It's what you would crony capitalism. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi

Without commonly shared and widely entrenched moral values and obligations, neither the law, nor democratic government, nor even the market economy will function properly. ~ Vaclav Havel

We know that in our free market economy some will prosper more than others. What we don't accept is the idea that some folks won't even get a chance. ~ Julian Castro

The more central problem of money in politics is something just as troubling but much harder to see: a system in which economic inequalities, inevitable in a free market economy, are transformed into political inequalities that affect both electoral and legislative outcomes. ~ Richard L. Hasen

Prostitution is, essentially, not a capitalist phenomenon but a patriarchal one. It did not automatically occur when people began to buy and sell but is instead rooted in the relationship between men and women. But when prostitution is incorporated an advanced, highly developed market economy, this complex power struggle itself becomes a commodity. Sex is separated from the person and becomes supernatural. ~ Kajsa Ekis Ekman

It's a market economy. Apparently the demand for great coaches exceeds the supply, so of course the price of good coaches is going to be high. ~ Michael Gartner